When you make your own paint, you immerse yourself in paint. You enter the colour.
I’m suggesting that it’s a more complete experience when you make your paint rather than squeezing it from a tube. This is how you can immerse yourself in the colour.
Why make your own paint?
You can take away your fear of colour when you make your own paint. I don’t want you to feel afraid of colour. You will break some of that fear when you make your own paint. The best book on this is Artists’ Materials: The Complete Source book of Methods and Media by Emma Pearce. I worked with Emma at The Slade School of Fine Art in the ‘90s and she really knows her stuff.
Colour is full of meaning
Secondly, colour is full of meaning. As a painter, I am very practical about colour. However, I also want you to understand that colour is full of meaning. When you make your own paint, you are engaging your senses. Whilst you make the paint, you are thinking and feeling your way into your painting. You can then get lost in the paint and the associations that the colour floats into your consciousness.
Making paint
Important and personal associations occur when you internalise the mute, sensual experience of making paint. Unexpected things will happen. So, become self-aware. Stop. Think. Take note of what’s happening.
Playing with colour
When you were a child, you explored the world from eye to mouth and from tongue to taste. You explored smells and sounds, temperatures and textures. At the time, this sensory experience was rolled into one. You did this whether pleasurably, of necessity, or as an adventure. But it was done in the innocence of investigation – to try things out. At the time, your whole being was fluid and in flux. Your sensual boundaries were not fixed. You did not compartmentalise or pigeon-hole your experiences. It was a life of tastes and temperatures, of food and smells. This experience expanded your understanding and identity, for better or for worse. Things are different now. As a result, you need to pay attention to what’s going on. On top of this, you need access your experience in all its fullness – physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Storehouse of possibilities
As a child, you became a storehouse of possibilities, playing and moving from indoor to outdoor encounters. Curiosity was key.
Curiosity
Curiosity, as opposed to habit, is now key. You will find it easier to play and paint if you change your thinking to be more like that of a child. When you become playful and explorative, you will feel free to express your inner galaxy. Try to be open to the ‘suffering of being’*. Try to be alive to change.
Engaging the senses
When you make your own paint, you engage your senses and open yourself to a new sensual, haptic experience. You become excited by the alchemy of pigment transforming into paint. Your senses will come alive to the possibilities of the variety of texture, intoxicating smells and possibilities.
Personality of each colour
This is how you will discover the personality of each colour. You will unlock the possibilities of each new colour. You will feel your way into the colour and you will begin to internalise the stuff of paint.
Magic will happen
When you make paint, new associations occur. If you are awake, unexpected things will happen. But this will only happen if you allow it. This is how the magic happens.
You can find my recent work exploring the colour Green as paint at the very bottom of my Manifesto of Painting here.
*Samual Beckett, On Proust (1931)
